The Woman in the Bazaar

by Alice Perrin

He got into his trap and swung rapidly out of the compound. In the light of the moon the dust-white road had a luminous appearance. Coventry remembered that the shortest route to the Roys' bungalow was by the bazaar; he judged that at this time of the night the streets would be clear. He would save a mile at least if he drove through the city.

He came to the outskirts of the great northern native town, a huddle of thatched huts, their thresholds blocked with sleeping forms. Pariah dogs fought and foraged among the rubbish festering in the gutters; their snarls mingled with raucous native coughing, the wail of fretful infants, long echoing yawns.

Then brick walls rose up, dark and irregular, topped with flat roofs, whence rose faint sounds of music and the murmur of voices. Now he had entered one of the main streets of the city that yet was hardly wider than a lane; here and there the road space was rendered still narrower by rough string bedsteads set outside the shops and dwellings, figures, scantily clothed, sprawling upon them. Bats flickered from the roofs across the strip of moonlit sky that was like a lid to the street. The air was stifling; indescribable exhalations, odours of kerosene oil, rancid butter, garlic, sandal-wood, spices, sweating Eastern humanity, thickened and soured the atmosphere, nauseating the white man who drove steadily on through the densely packed clusters of buildings. His head ached, his veins felt as though they must burst in his temples; it seemed to him that he had been driving for hours through this fetid wilderness of bricks, as if he should never emerge into air that was pure and untainted.

The beat of his pony's hoofs echoed loud and regular from wall to wall; otherwise there was a heavy silence as he drove through the silversmiths' quarter, and went past the side street where shoes and sandals were made and sold, a fact proclaimed by a horrible stench of badly cured hide. Suddenly he came upon a patch of light and noise. Some important domestic event was in course of celebration, perhaps a wedding, or the birth of a much-desired son. Rows of little lamps illumined one of the houses, just wicks alight floating in pans of coco-nut oil, diffusing smoke and smell; a gaudy group of nautch girls singing, twirling, blocked the doorway, and a crowd of musicians and guests and sightseers pushed and jostled each other for some distance down the street. Somehow he got through the flare, and confusion, and clamour, into the dimness beyond, only to find his way barred by a procession of camels padding towards him in shadowy, leisurely progress, groaning and grumbling, escorted by tall men clad in flowing garments and loose turbans, men with snaky black locks, hooked noses and fierce eyes; a camel caravan arriving from the north, laden with merchandise, weary and dusty with arduous travel.

Coventry was forced to halt. It would be impossible in this narrow thoroughfare to get past the long line of beasts burdened with huge bales that swung broadside from their backs. The syce stood up behind him to proffer advice.

That street, he said--the one to the left--would take them into another main road and thence out of the city just as quickly as if they waited for the camel folk to pass.

"It is the street," added the syce casually, "of the dancing women and such-like."

The leading camel, a towering, loose-lipped shape, lurched and lumbered almost on to the trap. Coventry, to avoid the bubbling beast, turned his pony's head, and next moment he was driving down the side street, down "the street of the dancing women and such-like."

Some of the balconies were silent and deserted, others held shadowy shapes; one or two interiors were ablaze with light, and the sound of tinkling music floated from them. There came to his mind the recollection of the hideous story he had heard on the racquet court, now some weeks ago, and he glanced about him with aversion.

The road was rough, scored with ruts and little hollows. Presently the pony stumbled badly, made a desperate struggle to regain his balance, and came down. By an acrobatic leap Coventry avoided being pitched into the road, the syce was shot beneath the seat of the trap, and the pony lay motionless, inert, in helpless submission to fate.